This Won't Be Graded: A Memoir by Mr G
by CPericardium
Summary: The life and times of a high school teacher who was pretty cool, but only if you were cool too. Mr. Gladly's autobiography.
1. Preface

Before his untimely death during the apocalypse, high school teacher Derek Hephaestus Gladly ('Mr. G' to those who loved him, and to his students) penned his autobiography on the loose sheets of paper available in the shelter where he lived out all but two of his remaining days. It was recovered by his girlfriend mere days before Earth Bet was rendered uninhabitable. Now living in relative safety on another earth, she has chosen to publish his unfinished and mostly unaltered manuscript posthumously.

The media has called Gladly's actions—or inaction—controversial in light of the recently released ghostwritten biography of one Taylor Hebert, infamous bug-controlling villain-turned-hero, who suffered an extensive bullying campaign that the teacher allegedly did nothing to prevent. Some have posited that he was a significant influence on her negative opinion of authority figures in her teen years, which would manifest itself as violent crime, bouts of infanticide, and the tendency to extol the virtues of narcotics to youths.

"_A part of her wanted to explain to [Gladly's girlfriend] that he was the worst sort of teacher, who helped the kids who already had it easy, and dropped the fucking ball when it came to those who needed it."_

—Chapter 8, Part 5: And Then the Water Lizard Attacked, _Caught in Your Web_

In his memoir, Gladly contends that he 'totally tried to help, but she was all, "don't do that" so [he] didn't'.


	2. Acknowledgements

**Acknowledgements**

I acknowledge that I've never been the greatest teacher, or the greatest person. Big picture though, is that really such a terrible thing? We all thought Scion was the greatest hero there ever was. But at the time of this sentence being written, I and millions of others are hiding from his disintegrating blasts.

So just like, be happy I'm not a wrathful omnipotent god hellbent on annihilating humanity? Also I wrote a book.


	3. Ch 1: Those Who Can

**Chapter One: Those Who Can't Do, Make PowerPoint Slides**

Here's what you need to know about capes: I never studied them in high school.

In my defense, I went to high school in the early '90s. Powers hadn't been around long enough for parahuman scientists and psychologists to formulate conclusive theories—still haven't, really. There were the founding members of the Protectorate, obviously, and a bunch of other foreign no-names who showed up at Endbringer throwdowns.

On top of that, I'm not a complete nerd. Maybe I'm not up to date on the minutiae of cape life or how the PRT is structured or the history of the Protectorate, but I can do a decent rap on the fly. I can also breakdance like a mofo, and was the reigning Beyblade champion at my local gym until I sprained my wrist (while breakdancing).

So when they gave me the outline for what I was supposed to cover this year, I was kind of hoping they'd tell me exactly what to say. Is it really so unreasonable to expect some parahumans major to swing by and give you a rundown of the basics? You'd think at the start-of-term faculty training workshop they'd hand you a syllabus and maybe a thin yet comprehensive booklet containing all the relevant information you can zap onto slides at 3am the night before you start the unit.

What actually happens at the faculty training workshop is this:

I arrived late on a rainy Friday morning. My girlfriend and I both woke up at six on the dot, but the problem was that we _both_ woke up at six on the dot. She was feeling frisky, one thing led to another and long story short, I spent thirty minutes longer than usual weeping on my bathroom floor and cleaning up mirror shards with my bare Vaseline-slick hands while she scrambled herself some eggs. Fortunately, it was a long weekend for the kids and Winslow was deserted, meaning I didn't have to compete for a parking space.

I signed in, collecting my nametag and lanyard from the beleaguered student parked outside the hall. He wasn't visibly tattooed, visibly Asian, or visibly splaying open my spleen with a swastika-emblazoned switchblade, so I could only presume he was roped in by the promise of brownie points rather than punishment duty. He did have blue eyes and majestically, almost certainly school policy-violatingly long blonde locks. Jury's out on whether he was hoping to take back the homeland, or was simply one lost soul in a little fishbowl who annotated Byron in secret. I'd recuse myself from said jury, obviously. I don't do profiling.

Armed with identification, I forged on at a brisk pace into the dimly lit, high-ceilinged hall. Right by the door was a buffet table, insomuch as five regular desks pushed up against each other with several curtains draped over them can be called a buffet table. Packets upon packets upon packets of M&Ms were piled on top of it.

Why are there so many M&Ms at faculty assemblies? Nobody knows. Maybe the administration thinks attendees are going to drop off like flies if they don't get their sugar fix. Maybe the candy is tinted Adderall, like my mother would hide in my mashed potatoes to get me to take my medication (I was twenty-four). The only events that have this many M&Ms are munches, though they're exclusively peanut and they're in communal bowls instead of individual packets. Now that I think about it I'm not sure the M&Ms are for eating, or that they are actually made of chocolate. I wouldn't know, because I don't snack on petri dishes.

I walked past that table. Seated up ahead in molded plastic chairs were my partners in pedagogy, being lulled into a stupor by the soporific tones of the lead facilitator. The guy I wanted to sit with was always in a stupor, thus immune.

The facilitator gave me the nod of acknowledgement—_you're here, I'm here, neither of us wants to be—_which I cheerfully returned. I plopped myself down in the empty chair next to Quinlan, about to thank him for saving me a seat when I noticed the chair on the other side of him was also empty.

No one ever wants to sit next to Quinlan.

Quinlan looks and smells like a down-on-his-luck elderly stevedore who cannot afford hot water and so performs his daily ablutions in a gutter flooded with vodka instead. His greatest fears are flannel tariffs, hepatic revolution and his own health insurance provider. Once, last Tuesday, I passed his classroom and witnessed him hooking himself up to a morphine drip that he'd brought from home while his entire freshman class watched in fearful silence. Before their innocent eyes, which had opened that morning expecting to encounter only polynomials and quadratic equations, he leaned back into his chair and cranked the dosage up as high as it would go. Also he was naked, but behind the desk so it was okay.

All of which is why I respect the man more than I respect my own father. I have never met another educator so committed to avoiding the act of educating that he periodically attempts to induce coma in the middle of teaching ninth grade algebra.

"'Sup, Quin-man," I said, cocking a fingergun. Just the one, though, or it'd cheapen the gesture.

Quinlan turns his head and double-checks my nametag. He double-checks his own nametag.

"Gladly," he grunted by way of greeting. His breath smelt like he'd been gargling hand sanitiser. "Gladly, Gladly, Gladly. Took you long enough. Did you bring my flask?"

It was technically my flask, but I'm a social drinker so he uses it more than I do. I reached into my messenger bag and produced the Lifegiving Beverage. This was why people kept me around.

He drank deeply. When he came up for air, he said, "Tastes like ass."

"I put a raw egg in it."

He sputtered, spraying droplets all over the front of his beard which he'd probably wring out in a pinch. "The hell'd you do that for?"

"I knew you'd skip breakfast, you old bag," I said, slapping him on the back. "You have to get your protein somehow. Athletes do it."

"Jesus," he said, disgusted, and took another long swig. "You're lucky I love the smell of salmonella in the morning."

Facilitators are attuned to this kind of unmoderated chatter, so of course the guy zeroed in on Quinlan and me. He seemed a nice enough fellow, soft-spoken, solidly built in a grey suit that showed off the bulk nicely. He had this wrinkly boiled cabbage of a face that loomed larger the longer you stared at it, and tiny deep-set blue eyes that only blinked when you blinked. Therapists probably wear a mask like his face when they explain to five-year-olds how their dog died, so as to ensure repeat business late into adulthood.

"Mr. Quinlan, is it?" the facilitator asked, teetering like a top as he pointed at Quinlan. "How would you describe your teaching style?"

Quinlan dragged a hand through his freshly tasered grey hair, considering the question in depth. "Intravenous."

"You mean the knowledge flows from you to your students?"

He looked bewildered. "No."

"Could you elaborate, then?"

"Legally," Quinlan said, "I'm not supposed to."

After a pause, the facilitator's finger skipped on over to me. "Mr. Gladly—"

"Mr. Gladly is my _dad_," I interrupted. "Please, call me Mr. G."

"Mr. G. How would you describe your methods?"

"Radical," I said. "Bodacious. I try to get students amped about the topic we're covering, show them just how cash money the humanities can be."

The truth is, the humanities aren't very cash money. I'm dead broke.

But the facilitator was pleased. "Good," he said, his voice charged. "Fostering enthusiasm is good. The humanities, you say? What do you teach?"

"Bit of this," I answered, "bit of that. Bit of everything, really."

"No, I mean what subject?"

"All kinds. Yesterday I taught the right way to eat Oreos. What you do is you open five packets of three, and you take all the cream out and just kinda smush it together into a ball. Then—"

"Mr. G." The facilitator cut me off. "What is your department?"

Nobody had ever asked me that before. I wracked my brain. "I'm not sure. Can a person ever truly know what their department is?"

"He teaches World Issues," Knott chimed in from down the row.

The facilitator's forehead creased. It was like the subduction of tectonic plates playing out over skin. "World Issues isn't a department."

"It's a subject," I said. "It's like Social Studies, only not lame."

"Hey," protested Adams, who got a diploma in 'Social Studies' from a degree mill and frankly wasted his parents' money from the moment he was born. Luckily for him, Winslow is strapped for dumbass gym teachers who peaked in high school.

"World Issues and Social Studies are identical," Knott said.

Oh, and 'Computer' is the same as Computer Science? Picture this: It's Thanksgiving dinner with the old extended family. The conversation inevitably drifts to what you do for a living. You tell them work at the local high school. Teaching—that most noble profession. Your mother-in-law asks, what do you teach?

You have to look her in the eyes and answer 'Computer'.

Computer! You teach teenagers how to touch-type! How to set up a blog! How to use a spreadsheet! When the android army descends upon us, they will be stymied by humanity's ability to program calculators that are somehow distinct from the calculator that already exists as a default application on most desktops!

I didn't voice any of this because, like all the other staff members, I am moderately terrified of getting into Judith Knott's bad books. A lot of people might attribute that to her arms, which are as wide around as tree trunks, or to her general musculature, which belongs on _Female Teachers Moonlighting as Bodybuilders Weekly_ (I don't read magazines), but I attribute it to the time she slashed my tires after I told her she was mispronouncing 'psyche'. Yet another reason women shouldn't watch _Hidden Figures._

"No they're not," I said instead. "I cover totally different topics."

"Like what?"

I reached for the first topic I remembered, which was the one I was supposed to teach on Monday but hadn't prepared a lesson plan for. "Capes."

"Oh really?" Adams said, folding his arms over his broad, polo-shirted chest. "You teach _capes_. Name one fact about capes."

Without missing a beat, I said, "They've been a force for both good and bad in the world."

"I think," the facilitator said, trying to take back the reins, "we're getting off track here—"

"Name even one fact about capes that isn't a vague generality."

I'm actually really passionate about this topic, I swear. I just can't spout trivia on command because I'm not a nerd.

Adams smiled like he'd won. Next to me, Quinlan did a key bump.

"Look," I said, with as much weary condescension as I could muster. "I _obviously_ know about the subject I'm teaching, because_ I'm teaching it. _If you want a sound bite, turn on the news."

"You think you're so clever, don't you, Gladly," Adams said.

"I don't think I'm clever," I said, reclining. "I think I'm cool. There's a difference, and that difference is why my students love me and yours hate you."

He stood up.

* * *

I hobbled into the classroom on Monday morning. "Hey guys."

"Hi, Mr. G," my students said, a chorus of mumbling.

The alert ones sat up. Their eyes were drawn automatically to my cast—or perhaps my face, which I hadn't had the chance to examine because I hadn't replaced my bathroom mirror yet.

"Bad news, boys and girls," I said, pulling a sour face. _Ow._ "I know I promised we'd be starting the capes unit today, but due to circumstances far, far outside my control, we're gonna have to postpone that topic."

Groans and sighs went round.

"I hope you're having a fun time frolicking in the land of the free, because today we're gonna be learning about democracy… through group projects!" I clapped the best I could while wearing a sling. "Let's break into groups of four, people!"

I knew this would make the majority of the class really happy and two or three kids really uncomfortable, but this is the price you pay for not having any friends.


	4. Ch 2: Mr Gladly is My Dad

**Chapter Two: Mr Gladly is My Dad **

I wouldn't call myself old.

Other people, if straw-polled on the street, wouldn't either. To the objective observer, I'm practically in my twenties. I chalk it up to good genes and good grooming.

My morning routine is simple. Brush teeth, floss, shave, splash on some aftershave and a medley of herb-scented facial toners, moisturise, dab on just a touch of styling wax to keep the coiffure roguishly tousled, apply half a can of Axe body spray, pop the collar and I'm out the door.

Joking, of course. There's all the exfoliating business, and I have to pick out an ensemble. Here's a secret: I like vintage clothing. A good bowtie can really set off your eyes. But there's only so much vintage clothing you can wear before you become vintage yourself, so only wear it as accents.

But I know what you're really wondering: _exactly how hot is Mr G? _

The answer is, hotter than my dad. My dad is old and infirm. So infirm, in fact, that he has to eat food through a tube. Meanwhile, I eat food out of paper bags and occasionally even cartons. I've got speed in spades and strength dribbling out of my sleeves—I was the hydration specialist on my high school baseball team. Even now I voluntarily visit the gym every weekend, just to recce the machines. I'm in the prime of my life.

Not to flex, but my raw physical prowess has gotten me out of a few scrapes in the past. For instance, when something happened a while back. It's gonna be some time before I've cleaned this up for publishing, so it won't actually be 'a while' back. I'll edit a date in later when I remember.

So, a while back, I was hanging out with three of my mates—Percival Quinlan, Jay Harley, and Steve Duncan. We were sitting around Harley's house, shooting the shit and getting progressively more wasted. I think we were celebrating something. I want to say someone got promoted, but I don't think teachers get promoted. Otherwise I'd be like, the CEO of Winslow High by now. Maybe Quinlan got tenure. That sounds right.

"Cheers," Quinlan said. "Cheers to me getting tenure."

"Whatever that is," Harley said. He raised his glass, and wrinkled his nose at the wine he'd been quaffing since 7pm.

Harley is revolving door staff. He subs for basically every class, in between writing his post-grad thesis. Major hipster, wears a lot of denim, appropriates a lot of cultures. He was a pack-a-day smoker when I met him, but recently he's switched to puffing tobacco-flavoured e-cigs and I can't comprehend why.

Harley is the kind of dude who spends the whole day at the park pushing a stroller around in the hopes that some eager single mother will flirt with him under the guise of complimenting his baby. Then, after they've successfully hit it off, he sweeps the blanket off to reveal that there is no baby and never has been. He proceeds to circle the woman with the stroller like a vulture: "You thought my baby was cute. You kept cooing at it, over and over. But all this time it was a bundle of cassava roots in a onesie. How does that make you feel?"

He'd propped himself up indifferently against his bookshelf, which was stocked with a meticulously curated collection of hardcover classics like_ Infinite Jest, Pale Fire,_ _On the Road _("Kerouac, not McCarthy, pleb"), and Ginsberg poetry anthologies.

I'd seen the spines, but I've never read a book I didn't have to.

"I don't know why I'm still here," Steve fretted, fussing at his sweat-dampened white button-down. "I should have been in bed two hours ago."

Steve _was_ the new history teacher, but he quit pretty early on and went back to Immaculata. No idea why he took off when Snotty Kids Central is an hour's drive away, although rumour has it that his wife just wasn't happy with him working somewhere with a gang problem. That's social stratification for you. He's a stand-up guy if you can get past the fluffy idealism and white picket fence dreams and self-imposed curfews.

I'll tell you what, though. He is boring as all get out. Allow me to pose a hypothetical scenario: Say you lose your arm in a freak accident. Or complications during surgery or whatever, and you have to get it amputated below the elbow. What do you replace your arm with?

Think about this carefully. There is a wrong answer.

Steve would choose a prosthetic arm. Seriously. Out of all the potential replacements—a sawn-off, a drill, a grappling hook, all kinds of Swiss army knife tinkertech bullshit (yes, I read the forums), he'd pick a metallic version of_ literally the exact same thing he had before,_ except less functional. I think cyborgs are as awesome as the next person, but we live in a dangerous city. There are limits to what you can do with a claw. Personally, I'd go for a harpoon gun and move dockside. How easy would fishing be if you could shoot spears with a thought?

You'd think Harley was the sexiest of us, because he's the youngest and wears waistcoats instead of condoms. You'd be wrong. Quinlan is the sexiest. We took a vote and he won three out of four. I voted for myself, but even I have to concede defeat. The man's a silver fox.

The phone rang, sparing me from having to make some pithy comment that would succinctly capture my personality. I picked it up so I could moan sensually into it if it turned out to be Harley's grandma or something.

"Hey… uh, hi," said the guy on the other line. Not Harley's grandma, sadly.

"Yeah?" I said. "Who is this?"

"Uh, I have your pizzas."

"Oh, sweet. Guys, pizza's here."

"But—"

"One sec," I said, heading towards the window to peek outside. There was nobody at the door that I could see. "Where are you?"

"Uh, wait, don't open the door."

"The catflap isn't wide enough to fit a pizza box," I said. "Trust me, I've checked."

"No, uh, I mean, don't open the door because there's, uh, there's dogs."

"Dogs?" I turned to my friends. "Delivery guy says there're dogs."

"Some of my neighbours have them, I suppose," Harley said, inspecting his nailjob. "But they should be tied up."

I brought the phone back to my ear. "Aren't the dogs tied up?"

"I meant my neighbours," Harley said.

"No," the guy on the other line said. He paused, and for a moment all that came through was his laboured breathing. "No, uh, these dogs aren't tied up."

Then we heard it: a howl that drew frost from the air.

Then another.

And another.

They went on and on, overlapping, getting louder. This wasn't normal howling. The sound was the aural equivalent of chewing a ball of tinfoil with toothpicks sticking out of it and then swallowing it. It rattled through your teeth and reverberated through your bones, found the part of you that still slept with a nightlight and ground it into kibble.

Worst of all, the howling wasn't just coming from the receiver. It was also coming from outside.

"So, uh, I can get the pizza to you but, uh, you're gonna have to, uh, collect it. I'm, uh, holed up in my truck. A block away."

I relayed the message. We all looked at each other, our skin prickling, our eyes wide. One of us was going to have to walk out there into the dark night, traverse the vast chasm of unspeakable canine-plagued horror that lay between this house and that truck, collect three pizzas, and make the journey back. Alone.

There were two main reasons we picked Steve.

Firstly, he was the least shithoused of all of us. He'd been talking all night about needing to drive home early, needing to see his wife before she went to bed, needing to send his two point five kids to school. I had a couple of classes in the morning, but it wouldn't be the first time I taught hungover. Anyway, he'd only had like three beers, while the rest of us were three steps away from puking our souls out. We reasoned that he'd be most likely to escape, should the worst come to pass and he garnered the attention of the hounds.

Secondly, Steve was and is pathologically afraid of dogs. Genuinely phobic. We used to think he was just allergic, because one time we were having dinner at Quinlan's and Steve excused himself when Quinlan's mom brought out the whippets, but then we caught him trying to pry open the garage door with a crowbar. Man, that was a great night. Quinlan's mom makes exquisite quiches.

I can't emphasise this enough: Steve Duncan is terrified of all members of the genus _Canis_. He walks the other way when he sees a pomeranian.

So not only would this be exposure therapy for him, it would also be a kind of group therapy for our shared complex that manifests as an itchy, swollen, burning desire to instigate and spectate each other's suffering. We dragged him out from the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and shoved him out onto the front steps.

No sooner had we thrown his wallet and an umbrella out after him and slammed the door shut did he start hammering away with his fists. He screamed and screamed, but no way were we letting him in yet. Knock knock. Who's there? Guy without pizza? Nice try.

He stuck his head through the catflap in desperation, so we briefed him while he could still hear us. Or Quinlan did, plumbing the veritable trove of knowledge he'd accrued from his past as a bum outrunning Boardwalk enforcers. The thing to remember, he said, is you _can't _outrun them. Enforcers, dogs and coke dealers are all faster than you—it's how they're built and how they grew up. So you just have to not move in straight lines, use obstacles to your advantage, trip them up where possible. You don't have to outrun the cops, you just have to outrun your friend. That sort of thing.

Steve wouldn't have the benefit of a friend out there in the wild, but hopefully just having that little slice of homegrown wisdom would bring him comfort.

"Don't worry," Quinlan said. "The parkour just kicks in."

When he realised we weren't kidding around, Steve finally stopped hyperventilating and crying long enough to go get the pizza. Harley held vigil at the window while Quinlan waited by the door for the signal to open it. I kept them both entertained with my sick freestyles.

_Winnin', grinnin', young like the night is_

_All this howlin' coming in like tinnitus_

_Quinlan, chillin', pumpin' gas like it's New Jersey,_

_Tenure in ten years, teaching math in a hearse, see_

_High noon at the Corral, all-he-can-eat is golden pussy_

Not twenty minutes later, Steve came running up the driveway with the boxes of pizza. He was not alone. He'd been followed by two hulking mutant lizard-dog monsters and now they were having it out on Harley's immaculately manicured lawn.

We huddled around the window and watched Steve tussle with the pair (something Quinlan explicitly said not to do, but Steve never was good at following instructions) for a while. There he was, batting at them valiantly with the umbrella while they were batting him around like kittens with a ball of yarn. It may be strange to compare cats to dogs, but I'd aver that it's stranger to compare dogs to eldritch reptilian hellbeasts that crawled up from the volcanic bowels of the earth.

"Somebody ought to get him in here," Harley remarked. "I'm absolutely famished."

"You could do it," I said, dread already creeping up on me.

"I _could_, but varnish doesn't dry that fast."

"Don't look at me," Quinlan said, in this creaky old voice that didn't sound anything like his usual guttural rumble. He gestured at his legs. "I'm so frail, I comparison shop for Zimmer frames."

I didn't have an excuse prepared. They both looked at me and nodded.

So with pounding heart, trembling hands, and decorative rainstick, I stepped into the fray.

They were way, way bigger up close. The streetlights illuminated every crag and spine and shard of calcified flesh. Why would anyone put spikes on a dog, a creature that was placed on this mortal plane for the express purpose of being petted? That's like, cotton candy that comes in the form of dental floss so it gets stuck between your teeth. It's actively malignant.

One of them growled at my approach, prompting me to bivouac behind a bush for a bit until my heart calmed down.

No sense getting panicky at the wrong time. Running on instinct can lead to some irreversible mistakes.

Unfortunately, Steve had noticed my tactical retreat. "Gladly! Gladly, help! HELP!"

I steeled myself and went back out there, holding the rainstick out like a sword. A man's gotta do.

God, I wished I had the umbrella instead. Those jaws could sever a limb, but that umbrella could survive a monsoon. It was fibreglass. I glanced nervously at the rainstick. It was made of bamboo. _Fucking_ bamboo! Pandas literally eat that shit for breakfast, and they can't eat anything. Stupid Harley. I bet he'd only been holding onto it as a potential regift.

Steve wasn't doing too well. They'd backed him into a topiary, content to snap and snarl at him. He flung the stack of pizza boxes onto the ground, right next to me.

That idiot. It was like he was trying to bait them away from him.

One of the monsters turned away from him to sniff at the box, more curious than anything. It raised its head, opened its mouth—

My body reacted before my thoughts caught up.

"_EAT RAIN!"_ I screamed, and jammed the rainstick between its jaws.

They say adrenaline is supposed to make everything sharp, throw the world into searing focus, but my vision went fuzzy instead. I couldn't think straight enough to flee, let alone break out the parkour. I felt something impact my stomach, robbing me of breath, and I fell. Just one careless swipe of a paw and I was on the ground.

Quinlan's voice blared like a foghorn through the mist.

"Get the pizza," he yelled through the window. "Get it, Gladly, you useless motherfucker, I swear to god. Get the pizza!"

People are capable of incredible feats of strength and agility when their pizza is at stake, even if they are bleeding internally. Coughing with pain and probably punctured lung, I scrambled forward on my hands and knees. I grabbed the boxes while one monster was spitting out the stick it'd snapped in two and the other was distracted by Steve's flailing. Then I made a break for the house.

I flew over the front steps, flinging myself and the boxes through the door. Quinlan and Harley locked it behind me. I collapsed on the welcome mat, where I was loudly and violently sick.

We dined like kings that night, supping on salvaged pizza and well-aged wine. The pizza was pretty good. I mean, it was kinda cold and they forgot the pineapple, but I'm sure even royalty has to fight for their substandard meals every now and then. Wine sucked though.

My ribs were bruised but not fractured, leaving me free to contemplate other, less physical lessons in the wake of this incident. For instance, nature is pretty scary when you think about it. What was up with those dogs? How did they get so big, and who put those spikes on them? An umbrella might be able to survive a monsoon, but at what cost? If that guy had the pizzas, but I was the one who delivered them, then who was phone? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

I haven't seen Steve in a while either. I hope his new arm's working okay.


	5. Ch 3: Bully for You

**Chapter Three: Assorted Thoughts on Discipline vis-à-vis Bullying**

"Personally, I do not believe in menstruation," Principal Blackwell said, steepling her hands over her desk. "I find it to be a rather filthy and degenerate habit."

Behind her was the whiteboard on wheels she'd had us drag into her office. On it, she'd drawn a blue vertical line separating two columns. A bulleted list ran down the length of each, both written in her cramped cursive scrawl.

In the WANT column: 'Stability', 'Status Quo', 'Funding', 'Community Support', 'Bonuses'.

In the DO NOT WANT column: 'Shutdown', 'Parental Complaints', 'Media Circus'. 'Lawsuit' was circled in red and underlined twice.

Blackwell reached into her drawer and pulled out a sealed baggie, which she dropped onto her desk where we could all see. Inside was a bullet-shaped tube mostly soaked and encrusted with a necrotic blackish-brown substance that was beginning to slough off in crystalline flakes. One end still had some exposed white cotton and a string trailing from it.

Sort of like if you bought one of those stuffed white prayer bunnies from the church thrift store, snipped the thread joining its clasped paws, then snipped its whole arm off, sewed up the hole but unravelled one of the threads so it stuck out, left the arm inside your mom for a couple of months, retrieved it, toasted it over an open flame and scraped at the blackened resin that formed with your bitten fingernails.

That's the level of vaguely Satanic energy that was emanating from this thing. If you say 'heavy flow' three times in the mirror at midnight, it'll lodge in your throat when you're sleeping and absorb your last breath.

"What's that?" Quinlan said, standing up and peering at it. He was practically salivating. He'd skipped breakfast again, I knew it. "An éclair?"

Knott's face contorted. "Have you ever seen an éclair in your life, Quinlan? That's a used tampon. Probably _weeks_ old."

"Oh." He sat down, discomfited. "Are we sharing?"

She didn't deign to respond.

"_Filthy,"_ Blackwell repeated, "in all senses of the term. Absolutely rancid. If girls are going to concoct this sort of uterine sewage on a monthly basis, the least they can do is keep it in their wombs."

Knott furrowed her brow, opened her mouth, looked around the room at us guys, and finally met Blackwell's severe gaze. "Ms. Blackwell," she said, hesitantly. "_You _menstruate."

"No, I most certainly do not. I came to my senses and ceased engaging in such depravity years ago. I'd thank you to not assume these vile proclivities of me, Judith." Blackwell curled her lip into a moue of distaste, and her eyes flashed with naked hostility as she flicked them up and down Knott's seated form. "God knows I've never judged _you_ for your brazen... endometrial… _indiscretions._"

Knott started to say something else, but changed her mind.

Blackwell sighed and settled back into her faux-leather swivel chair, turning her gaze to the ceiling. "Be that as it may, we cannot police students' private lives."

"Why not?" Adams asked.

"Because," Blackwell said, reaching for her mouse. Her computer screen glowed to life. "If we cracked down on every little act of turpitude committed at Winslow, we would have to discontinue—"

She cleared her throat and began to scroll.

...

"...the distillery, the poker den—and you know how the janitors get, they unionise—the printing operation in the boiler room, the faculty prostitution ring..."

"Counterfeiting isn't a vice, it's a livelihood," I interjected.

"Good thing too," Adams said. "I couldn't handle another salary cut. Still got the installments on my new car to deal with."

Quinlan shot up, betrayed. "Wait, you all get _paid!?"_

"In conclusion," Blackwell said, raising her voice to speak over him, "we will not be disciplining the serial bleeders. It's a slippery slope from there on out, perhaps even literally. I won't have my school devolve into some Orwellian nightmare."

Knott bit her lip. "Ms. Blackwell, we're not punishing anyone for having their periods."

"Thank you for echoing me, Judith, but it's not necessary."

"No, I mean, that is not what this meeting is about. Or should be about, anyway."

"_I_ called this meeting, so I think I might have a better grasp of what it is about than you," Blackwell said. "The chief of police spoke to me personally, as did several doctors, as did Mr. Hebert. I have been lectured enough on the correlation between sepsis and the microbiome of soiled feminine products to conduct my own seminar on the subject." She squinted off into the distance and tapped her fingers together. "I would title it _Managing the Modern Woman: Menarche and the Moral Wasteland. _Two credits."

"Yeah… no one would go to that," Adams said.

"I would," I said, raising my hand. Maybe it would teach me stuff about my girlfriend. "I'd take notes."

Quinlan grunted. "Sounds like an HR class."

I lowered my hand.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Knott said, before Blackwell could snap at us, "but we _are_ here to discuss Lockergate, aren't we? Address the bullying problem?"

Blackwell's eyes narrowed to gimlets at the mention of that-which-must-not-be-named. I'm telling you, that locker was like the King in Yellow at one point.

"The police searched the area thoroughly," she said, crisp. "There is no bullying problem at this school."

"They did _not_ search the area," Knott insisted. "What would they even have searchedfor?"

"Evidence of bullying, of which they found none. We know this because they left."

"They left after you bribed a student to parade in front of their cars wearing a sandwich board that said 'Bully-Free Since '83'."

"What happened in the seven years before that?" Adams wondered.

"One teeny, tiny impaling incident." Blackwell made a circle the size of a coin with her hand and pressed it against her gut, then flicked her fingers to dismiss the memory. "Inconsequential, as I will not atone for the failures of my predecessors. Down that road lies minor inconvenience to myself. I can only do my best in the here and now."

"What would be best," Knott said, "is if we present a united front against the social ill that led to that poor girl being treated like that in the first place. Show that we don't tolerate such behaviour, enforce disciplinary measures, educate would-be perpetrators. An anti-bullying campaign."

Silence fell as we mulled over her words.

"Or," Adams said, slowly, raising a finger, "or, and I'm just spitballing here… we install a bar in the staff lounge."

"YES!" Quinlan whooped and pumped both fists. "Fucking lord, yes!"

"Oh, I like that." Blackwell leaned forward to key in a note on her computer.

"Actually not a bad idea," I admitted. "That would solve all our problems. You're not as stupid as you look."

Blackwell leaned back, pursing her lips in contemplation. "I'm thinking a pale wood for that rustic, yet classy aesthetic. We're down-to-earth, we drink and grade like everyone else..."

"Nah," I said, "don't get me wrong, I love a good wooden bar, but rolled zinc is trendy right now. After a couple of years you also get that awesome patina from all the spills and finger oils. Shows we roll with the times."

"Trendy," Blackwell mused. "It _would_ match the carpet more."

"If we move the couches around a little, we can get a curved one," Adam added.

"Who cares what it looks like," Quinlan said. "Whiskey Wednesdays, everybody! I'm tending!"

"Whiskey?" Blackwell shook her head. "Fine spirits are wasted on the lot of you."

"You know," Knott said, "I would really appreciate it if we went back to discussing how to prevent young girls from getting trapped in their own lockers by their peers."

"Knott," Quinlan said, and she turned to him. "Knott. Knott. You're a fine teacher, an unfathomable beast, a goddamn inspiration to educators everywhere. I think you're a strong woman in so many ways. Maybe the strongest I know, and I know my ex-wife. So don't take this the wrong way, but you suck."

Adams and I didn't speak or even nod but we radiated resounding agreement. Knott folded her arms and looked off at the wall.

"I'm inclined to agree," Blackwell said. "But I suppose we _should_ do something about it, if we can't resolve the menstrual situation. Do any of you feel the same way?"

Adams shrugged. "Bullying builds character, and I don't think it's possible to teach kids empathy at that age. Their brains just aren't developed enough. I'll go along, but only so I can say 'I told you so' at the end of it."

"I'm down for anything," I said, to be contrary.

Quinlan opened the tampon baggie and gave the contents a thoughtful sniff. "I don't really care," he said, "but I'd be a lot more comfortable knowing we covered our asses in case the cops come snooping around again. Or parents."

Blackwell glanced at the DO NOT WANT column, and you could see the shiver race down her spine as the grim spectre of litigation unveiled its face. "Fine," she said, grudgingly. "We will attempt this 'anti-bullying campaign'. Adams, inform the other staff. Judith—"

"I'll print posters," Knott said.

"Print? Oh no, no, no, we need that ink for counterfeiting. We'll have the children make their own. They can bring paper from home, or better yet, reuse the recruitment flyers those Empire miscreants keep sticking to the bulletin boards. Gladly."

I saluted.

"I'm putting you in charge of the anti-bullying task force. See something, say something." She paused. "Well, run it by me before you say something. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. In fact, perhaps don't say anything if you can help it. Don't ask, don't tell. Yes, that's a much better slogan. Quinlan, fetch me liquor catalogues. Quinlan!"

"Mmf," Quinlan mumbled and nodded, chewing vigorously. "Interesting mouthfeel."

* * *

And thus began the great anti-bullying campaign of 2011. It lasted a month, charitably speaking.

Well, the posters did, anyway.

I like Agnes Blackwell, I really do. You can always trust her to do what needs to be done, be it talking parents into donating despite the gang presence or any other form of institutional mendicancy. But I quickly began to wish I'd gotten poster duty. Being a glorified hall monitor was doubleplus uncool.

This is how ninety-nine percent of the conversations went:

**Mr. G: **Hey, is this bullying I see going on here?

**Student:** No, this is loitering/negging/hazing/gang violence.

**Mr. G:** Oh okay carry on.

What was I supposed to tell them? To not socialise? Newsflash: not socialising is how you get unpopular enough that people want to bully you. I need to stress this so you understand where I'm coming from—I have literally never been bullied in my life. I just don't get singled out because, well, have you seen these moves? There _was_ one period in preschool when some jerkwad followed me around with his droogs chanting 'Gladly, Gladly, Smells-So-bad-ly', but I go by Mr. G now, so it clearly hasn't impacted me in any significant way.

The other one percent of the time, I spent trying to explain to teens why they shouldn't pick on their fellow, physically and socially inferior teens. I have to agree with Adams here, kids that age are made of knives and spiders.

I was getting kind of antsy about my lack of success patrolling the hallways, because I knew why Blackwell assigned me this position: She needed a scapegoat for if and when something similar to or worse than _that_ incident occurred. When the firing squad came, I'd be the first against the wall.

In the end I decided, why do a bunch of small, invisible things to improve the community when I could do something big and flashy? I didn't come up with this, by the way. It's a classic politician move. Three weeks into the campaign, I ended a class twenty minutes early so we could have a heart-to-heart about bullying.

"So, uh, that's the homework, but as always it's not mandatory," I said, sitting on my desk. "Hey, do you guys remember the thing that happened? The thing with the locker? The girl in the locker?"

A few titters.

"No, don't laugh. It's not funny."

They continued to giggle.

"Now, I know that you're all thinking," I said, shrugging it off. "'Wow, that girl must be such a total creepy loser for everyone to dislike her so much'. I'm here to tell you that just because people are losers doesn't mean you have to stuff them in a locker full of gross… bathroom stuff. Be the cooler person, y'know? But I know it's hard, so we're going to practise."

I had them all leave the classroom and go out into the vacant corridor. We were on the first floor, at this T-junction that afforded us plenty of space to gather. I showed them the locker I had prepared for this exercise.

Before leaving the house that morning, I'd borrowed a twenty-pack of Tampax from my girlfriend. There was a time she wouldn't have been caught dead in possession of even a cardboard applicator. My mother-in-law raised my girlfriend to only ever use pads. Tampons were straight-up banned in that household, like there were actual monthly cavity searches for contraband cotton products. Real Arstotzkan hours up in that place. Not because of the risk of toxic shock syndrome, which I hear is a thing, but because she was supposed to save her hymen for marriage or she would—I quote—'die a lonely lesbian whore eaten by her own cats'. As the proverb goes: _If it penetrates, it don't get dates_.

Now that she's with me, she uses tampons all the time. She also has panic attacks when her cycle starts, but that's unrelated.

For variety and ease of sticking, I'd also snuck into the girls' bathroom to buy a handful of other personal care products from the dispenser. Three bucks worth, because money was as tight as my girlfriend. Thank you sanitary pads? I'd then smeared various red fluids over them—nail polish, raspberry jelly from the cafeteria, and some other stuff I found lying around. Promised a janitor I'd show up for poker night with beer and a loaded wallet, and I got access to one of the lockers.

Now, in lieu of the books that'd been there that morning, its interior was plastered with gooey pads, tampons and pantyliners. Not quite as disgusting as the contents of the original locker, but similar enough to capture the mood. The tenor. The atmosphere.

Classic biohazardous locker simulation. Never let it be said that I'm unwilling to go the extra mile to discourage bullying among teens.

I told my class that I was going to pair each of them up with someone who wasn't their friend. Then, one of them was to stand in front of the locker, and the other would try to not lock them inside while the rest of the class egged them on. The objective was to get to a point where you would be able to resist the temptation of inflicting long-lasting trauma on someone outside your circle of friends.

I was about to grab one of the popular kids—they were the least likely to have experienced bullying in their lives—when I noticed a girl trying to sneak away. I can always sense when people are trying to hide from me. I'd call it teacher's intuition, but I've been able to do it long before I was teaching.

I homed in on this bespectacled kid. She had a raincloud for a face—gloomy, actively being smothered in masses of black curls. And she was tall and skinny, like if a broomstick mated with a beanpole and the former had to have a C-section because natural delivery risked irreparably damaging its internal organs. Finding someone who wasn't friends with her would be a snap.

"Hey, uh…" I snapped my fingers a few times, trying to remember her name. It wasn't coming. "...you. You can go first. Pair up with Julia over there."

"Mr. G, can I be the bully?" Julia asked politely, stepping forward.

I thought about it. "Yeah, but you have to switch after, if we have time."

"Thanks, Mr. G," she chirped, approaching the locker.

We all looked at the black-haired girl in expectation. She shrank into her oversized hoodie, mute and unmoving, her eyes fixed straight ahead but apparently seeing nothing. After a moment of heavy breathing, she shook her head.

"Come on," I said, widening my grin. I gestured at the interior, swinging the door invitingly. "This is a safe space. Nothing to fear."

Her lips parted. No sound came out. Someone giggled.

Then she turned around and walked away briskly, disappearing into the bathroom down the hall.

We stared after her.

"...okay. So, that happened." I spun around and clapped my hands. "I guess I'll just have to demonstrate. Everyone gather round. Wait, actually, everyone form a line."

It was a productive afternoon.

...

"GLADLY!"

I startled at the shrill cry, accidentally slamming the door shut. A great deal of clanging and banging ensued as I turned my head to see Blackwell storming over.

"_Why are you shoving Madison Clements into a waste-filled locker!?"_

Behind her, Adams emerged from around the corner.

"I told you so,"he hissed, and drew back into the shadows.


	6. Ch 4: Sorry for the Misogyny

**Chapter Four: Sorry for the Misogyny but These Bitches Be Messing with Mr. G (Part I) **

Most people try to come up with unique New Year's resolutions every year, but I always commit to the same one: help everyone else be a better person.

It's an ambitious undertaking to be sure, but the feeling I get when I guide even one wayward child through the valley of the shadow of death is without parallel. One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is being able to do this on a daily basis, in numerous small ways. This specific instance comes readily to mind.

So it was one of the seven weekdays—probably not Friday, because Quinlan, Knott and I were in the staff lounge fortifying ourselves. On Fridays, we do that at night and with cards. It was early, too. I like coming to the school early because it means I spend less time at home alone with my thoughts, or worse, alone with my girlfriend's thoughts.

Quinlan had started getting to work earlier in the day as well. Maybe it had something to do with the brand spanking new secondhand zinc bar, but I can't say for sure.

"It's like this," he was saying as he mixed us drinks. "We get all the names of the girls track team members from Adams at the end of the day. We write 'em on scraps of paper and stick 'em in a box. Then we each pick a name. Whoever picks the track kid who wins tomorrow's meet gets the whole pot."

"I do so enjoy drawing lots for wagers," Knott said, gazing down into her coffee-infused bourbon, "because it turns tests of skill and observation into luck-based contests, rendering everything meaningless and arbitrary."

"Yeah, that," Quinlan said, nodding. "So, you guys in? Fifty bucks each."

Knott, being a rube and already fairly pickled, agreed. I was in from the word 'free-money'.

Quinlan set my usual glass of brandy down in front of me. I drank about a third and discreetly set the rest back down, to be poured into the neglected ficus by the couch later.

I had to think.

See, I knew from the non-disclosure agreements we'd signed at the start of the year that at least one of them was a Ward. Maybe whoever it was had the power to spit cyanide or glow in the dark or something unrelated to enhanced speed, but what were the odds? Why be on the track team if you don't have some advantage that lets you make the competition literally eat your dust? If I picked that cape's name, I'd win for sure.

I just had to remember who it was.

I pretended to grade papers while I waited for them to leave and for Adams to come in half an hour later. When he did, I explained to him that he needed to give me the name of the cape on the girls' track team.

He wanted to know why, of course, because he's an unrelenting busybody. He wouldn't believe my story about being a top-secret government agent tracking a rogue vigilante, so I had to tell him about the bet. He took it about as well as I expected.

"That is so dumb," Adams said, shaking his head as he filled his mug at the sink. "It's just a dumb bet."

"Yeah, go on and hydrate," I said. "All that salt's gotta be making you thirsty. Then tell me who it is."

"How about no." He emptied about ten sachets of protein powder into the mug and started dragging a spoon through the slurry.

"It's not like I don't already know. The information is in my mind palace somewhere, I just don't have access to it right now."

"That isn't the dumb part," he said, "although yes, that is pretty dumb. The_ dumb _part is that you think being a parahuman is guaranteed to give you an edge on the track. I can name at least two of my runners who are faster than that one Ward."

"I don't want you to name them," I said. "I just want you to name the Ward."

"Besides," he said, ignoring me, "if any of them was using powers to cheat, I'd have caught them."

"And you would know this for absolute certain?"

He raised the mug of organic swill to his mouth, looking smug, like all the smugness had gone to his head and swelled into the language centre of his brain so he couldn't answer me. Stupid idiot.

I drank another third of my brandy to show him what he was missing out on. "Okay. What are you willing to stake on it?"

"If the Ward wins," he said, "I get you the desk fan with the five settings you keep blathering about. If anyone else wins, you wash my car for the next five months."

"Splendid," I said, warming to the deal, or maybe the alcohol. I'd never been able to justify the cost of that little appliance, despite its incontrovertible awesomeness. "So tell me who the Ward is."

"Not that easy, Gladly. I'll tell you after the meet."

"That's not fair. How do I know you're not lying?"

"Ask Knott or Quinlan. Or Blackwell." He grinned. "I'm sure she'd be happy to remind you."

Blackwell was out of the question. As soon as she found out about the wager, the whole thing would be dead in the water. Meanwhile, Knott and Quinlan probably didn't realise the advantage a parahuman had over their normal peers, and I wasn't about to clue them in on my plan to sleight-of-hand the name-drawing.

I had to make the Ward, or at least their name, come to me. The solution was obvious. I stared at my remaining third of brandy, and after a long minute, gulped it down.

I was going to have to stage a crime.

In between periods, I trawled the corridors till I found a kid with Empire tattoos, a shaved head, and the kind of face you feed into image recognition software so it learns how to identify future parole violators. I called him into an empty classroom pretending to want to go over his algebra test.

"Hey," I said as soon as we sat down, "so, I'm not actually your math teacher."

"I know," he said, eyeing me warily. "Mr. Quinlan doesn't give tests. Our final exam last year was calculating how much paint he could huff in one sitting. What's this about?"

I looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, then quickly approximated a salute. "_Sieg heil_, dude."

"My name is Dustin," he said.

"Of course it is. Listen, Dusty, you want a chance to 'never forget' it on with a Jewish individual in broad daylight?"

He scrunched his nose. "I have a girlfriend."

"No, I mean rough them up a bit. Except not really. It'll be consensual. Just call them slurs and pretend to throw a haymaker or two. For a demonstration."

"Not interested," he said.

I did some quick mental math. "I'll pay you in vending machine snacks."

He sneered. "You ever eaten anything from the vending machine? It's all packaged garbage."

"Then I'll just give you the spare change I was going to use to buy the snacks," I said in exasperation. "Are you a Nazi or not?"

"I'm not a fucking Nazi," he said, volume rising to match mine. "My parents are neo-Nazis. I'm a race realist."

"That's the _same thing_."

He looked even more offended. "It so isn't? I can cite articles."

"Look, it's not my job to educate you," I said. I lowered my voice and leaned in. "Just fake-assault someone for me. I promise you won't get in trouble. It won't 'Holocaust' you a cent."

I could see interest flicker in his eyes, but it soon guttered out and he slumped back into his seat.

"To be honest, I'm not sure it's worth the effort," he said. "The principal said I wasn't allowed to commit more than two hate crimes a month now that I'm a senior. I'm already halfway through my queue for March. Wanted to save the last one for something special."

Fuck. Blackwell has this weird condition where she has to be kept abreast of all matters that take place within the school, even the ones that don't really concern her and that she won't do anything about anyway. If she finds out something's been going on behind her back, she yanks one of us into her office and just totally chews us out.

I don't like being chewed out and strive to avoid this fate as much as possible, but sometimes it's inevitable.

"Just checking—did she impose any limit on non-hate crimes?"

"She didn't mention them," Dustin said.

"Would it help," I said, "if you wore a balaclava to protect your identity, and you pretended to beat up an unambiguously white student? It wouldn't count as a hate crime, more like a regular mugging to throw her off your scent in case you get caught and unmasked."

This was better, I decided. After all, muggers strike at all hours of the day, while racists mainly emerge at night, in internet comment sections.

"But I won't get caught," he said pointedly.

"You won't get caught," I assured him. "It's just for show."

"I want the Pop-Tarts. Only thing worth shit in those machines. S'more-flavoured. At least…" He hesitated. "Three."

"You'll get them. Just meet me at the hall in twenty minutes."

I wrote him a note excusing him from classes for the day, and he left.

We couldn't be seen leaving the same room, so I sat there for a while sending a few necessary texts and working out what needed to happen at what time.

"'Supremacy' you later," I said, to the empty classroom.

* * *

"Atrocious. Absolutely_ anaemic._ Is this a mugging or a matinée?"

Harley stalked the stage of Winslow's decrepit multipurpose hall. I'd asked him to help out because he'd subbed for the theatre club a couple of times (the teacher-in-charge often left on extended spiritual journeys to find herself). But I was pleasantly surprised by how well he'd choreographed the mugging.

In rehearsals, at least.

"Where," Harley said, "is the _power?"_

"That's what I'm trying to find out," I piped up from my seat at the back.

"Derek, kindly refrain from commentary." Gesticulating with his e-cigarette, Harley approached the leads and the extras behind them. "Thought, flowing into emotion, flowing into motion. Thought, emotion, motion. Thought, emotion, motion. You cannot switch expression from shock and fear to suppressed fury _mid-movement_. That is not complexity—that is an incoherent, unreadable mishmash. Finish the motion, hold the pose, and let the nascent feeling seep into your body language like ether into Granny's favourite shawl."

He pointed at the girl I'd recruited to play the victim of the crime.

I'd determined that the best victims of muggings across all axes were elderly women—their chronic helplessness inspired sympathy. However, it was unlikely that I could secure the participation of either the lunch lady or the librarian without being coerced into certain favours I just didn't have the shovels for right now.

My underground casting call had instead uncovered Naomi, this kid who looked like a mix between a young girl and a little old lady. Which was pretty unfortunate for her at this stage in her life, but good if she wanted to play an intentionally misleading standardised patient in medical simulations. Does she have juvenile-onset or late-onset Alzheimer's? Should you be directing her to the pediatric care ward or scheduling the euthanasia appointment? Nine out of ten doctors hate her.

She was doing a great job here—muscles locked, face a rictus of controlled anguish. She was trembling and sweating beneath the stage lights like she was really afraid.

"...I want you to turn like you mean it," Harley told Naomi. "Swing around as you cry out, so that your outrage boomerangs into the audience. They will feel its impact."

She had to demonstrate this six times. Temporarily satisfied, Harley rounded on Dustin and the large red purse the boy was clutching.

"_You. _You're extricating it from her like you're merely—" He skimmed the purse with his long spidery fingers, then feigned plucking it from his grasp. "—_pick_pocketing her. Tell me, young Adolf, do you remember who you are?"

"My name is Dust—"

"Yes! Your name is dust. It does not matter. Let your history drift from your core and disperse into the wind. Then, as you feel yourself hollow out, command yourself to_ become._ You are now the infant Führer, reincarnated as a brutish youth in a crime-ridden city at the end of the millennium, cast from society by the simple fact of your socioeconomic standing. Luck has seen you fit enough to make a humble living loading cargo at the docks, but you've found it hard to get by ever since the union went on strike. It's tough, oh, so tough."

"I've got to hold on," Dustin whispered, staring down at the purse in his hands, "to what I've got."

Harley nodded fervently. "It doesn't make a difference if you make it or not."

"You've got my money, and that's a lot," Naomi said, "for—"

"Bystander #4!" Harley suddenly snapped, whirling around to tower over one of the extras, who gasped and stumbled back. He continued, singsong, "If you don't stop trying to pull focus, I will _pull _your intestines out through your gullet."

"I'm not..." the extra squeaked.

Harley sniffed. "Of course you're not_._ With hands like yours? You will never make it in this business. You have zero potential! Zilch!"

The extra started sobbing into his disproportionately large hands.

"That's right, soak those kielbasas," Harley said, his voice ripe with contempt. "Even your misery fails to persuade."

I had to step out for a while to teach a class. By the time I got back, Dustin had become Naomi's jilted lover to create a 'solid emotional throughline', and he'd renounced the Nazi ideology in order to be able to languish in the proverbial left-wing closet of his alt-right household. Suffering breeds hitherto undiscovered acting talent?

I didn't care about the details. Mostly I'd been worried that Harley would get impatient and kick things off without me, but I figured that as long as no track team members saw a preview, everything should be go off without a hitch.

The problem was that he'd taken some decorative liberties at the site.

"No," I said. "No. No. You can't advertise it, Harley, you dipstick. I need it to look real."

"It does look real," he said. "Well, verisimilar."

"What part of this—" I gestured at the freshly glitter-painted signboards announcing the debut of two local stars in this exciting new psychological thriller. "—looks real? What does this mean, 'you'll laugh, you'll cry'? No one is supposed to laugh or cry!"

"There is always some artifice in theatre," he said with a dismissive flourish. "It's part of the experience."

"Well, there's too much of it! I'm trying to lure out a hero. If they see it's just some avant-garde crap and not a real mugging, they won't intervene."

"Intervene?" Harley asked, galled. "No one is _intervening_ in anything until intermission. I have already disseminated flyers."

I was sunk. The track team would be here in twenty minutes, the cape among them, and I had no ready way of drawing out whoever it was unless they were really, really enthusiastic about crime dramas—to the point that they would jump on set for an autograph.

Then, like a crossbolt from the blue, it hit me.

During the play, while the whole track team was watching, I had to commit a real crime in the audience.

Muggings happen at all hours. But sometimes, all of them happen in one.

* * *

To be continued...


	7. Ch 5: But These Bitches Be

**Chapter Five: Sorry for the Misogyny but These Bitches Be Massaging Me (Part II) **

I took lockpicking classes once. Well, I took one lockpicking class. Kind of.

During one of my brief stints of unemployment before teacherdom, my girlfriend started reading a lot of self-help books. Not that psychology junk, more like... how to do needlepoint. How to grow your own watercress in eggshells. How to make three-course microwave dinners for one. That sort of thing.

Because bettering themselves usually bestows upon people the need to inflict a similar curse on others, she started bugging me to pick up a new skill as well. I was getting tired of finding little scroll frames of canvas embroidered with 'WORK HO' under the couch cushions, so I looked up classes offered at the local community college till I found one that seemed mildly interesting.

Lockpicking 101. It was a series of nine modules, but the first one was free. I figured I would just go to that and when my girlfriend inevitably asked me over microwaved watercress what skill I was learning, I'd tell her about the first part of the lesson. Then over the next few weeks, I would dole out the rest of the information I'd picked up from that one class, like a plane crash survivor on a desert island rationing their remaining supplies so they wouldn't have to crash seven more planes.

Here's the thing, I arrived twenty minutes early, because I knew I'd need the buffer time to find the classroom. But there was a minor kerfuffle with the registrar who insisted I needed to be enrolled at the college in order to take the course, a detail so clearly unimportant that they hadn't seen fit to put it on the website at all. By the time things were sorted out (that is, when I decided to stop arguing, pretend to leave, and secretly attend anyway), the class was already underway. To get directions from the registrar, I donned a makeshift disguise which she immediately saw through, and that started the whole thing up again.

I eventually found the classroom after some wandering. The door wouldn't budge, so I knocked. The class turned and glanced at me through the window in the door. The instructor looked over too, but she didn't do more than wave.

I pulled and pulled, but I realised the door had to be locked as the first test in a lockpicking gauntlet. I tried to MacGyver some cracking tools out of the guts of a mechanical pencil, but the bits (mostly the lead) that even managed to fit in the hole broke off and got stuck. All the while, the instructor kept talking about ethics. I knew she was talking about ethics, because the word 'Ethics' was written on the whiteboard, and I could kind of read her lips. I gave up and just listened with my ear against the window.

Later I found out that the door opened inward.

So in case you had any doubts about my ability to break into a locked room, that's the extent of my lockpicking knowledge. Snatches of a lecture about ethics overheard from a hallway outside a classroom that wasn't even locked.

"Gladly, what do you think you're doing?"

That unmistakably strident voice came from behind me, right by my ear, eliciting from me a flinch and a masculine grunt of alarm. I hid the hairpin behind my back and turned to see Blackwell peering at me with suspicion.

"Is there a reason you are attempting to infiltrate the dressing room?"

"I'm not, uh… the door, it's not," I said. "Working. As a door. What brings you here?"

"I've been invited to be the guest-of-honour."

"Do plays have guests-of-honour? I thought that was more of a ceremony thing."

"This one does." Blackwell's gaze sharpened further, lending credence to the—at the time popular—staff theory that she applied eyeliner with razor blades and then just let the slits scab over for that dash of extra boldness. "What do you think you're doing?"

I took care not to cut myself on that edge. "Nothing, just… checking on things. "

"When you lie to me, do it with intent or don't waste the breath," Blackwell said. "Understand that I'm only repeating my question with the expectation that you've had enough time to fabricate something a shred more convincing."

Blackwell doesn't do much formal teaching anymore, but she does enjoy enlightening students and subordinates on the hard truths. She also really enjoys engineering elaborate teachable moments. It's a hobby that borders on addiction. I'd say she's like an education-themed Simurgh clone, except the Simurgh probably doesn't occasionally declare martial law and commandeer all the tater tots in the cafeteria to impart a lesson about living under a junta. A story for another day.

If there's one thing Blackwell's drilled into us over and over, though, it's that you never squander a resource as precious as the truth. I lifted my chin, rallying enough to meet her level stare. I picked my words the way a bomb disposal squad picks red wires.

"I'm sweeping the premises. Making sure everything's safe for the kids," I said. "Just in case, you know, there's… a bomb."

Danger radiated off of Blackwell in waves. Wrong wire.

"Gladly," she said, "if so much as a firecracker goes off during the proceedings, there will be hell to pay and you will be the one to pay it."

"What if someone else armed it?"

"I don't care if the Asian Bad Boyz themselves execute a terrorist attack on this school," she said. "If I catch one whiff of you attempting to sabotage the budding careers of these young thespians and, more importantly, the reputation of Winslow High School, it will be the remains of your head on the chopping block."

There's only one acceptable answer in these situations. "Understood, ma'am."

But I heard the unspoken words that trail after every threat she makes, the ones she always denies implying but that are always there nonetheless: _So don't get caught._

I walked to the recess on the left side of the stage, where the slightly off-key but no less passionate strains of a copyrighted ballad extended its tendrils into the shadows. They'd reached the part where Naomi had tricked Dustin into attending a Muggers Anonymous meeting and he was storming out.

"There's only us, there's only this," Naomi sang, her voice warm and lilting. "Forget regret, or life is yours to miss!"

The rest of the support group stalked Dustin around the stage in ever-tightening spirals.

"No other path, no other way..." they rumbled, as he attempted to physically shake off the ghosts of his guilty past. "No day but today…"

"I can't con_trol_," Dustin belted, his voice cracking on the last syllable, "my destiny!"

Naomi sprang forward and gripped his hands. She gazed deeply into his misunderstood troublemaker eyes. "I trust my soul. My only goal…"

_"...is just to be..."_

He wrenched his hands away, and his eyes from hers only a moment later. "Just let me be!"

"There's only us, only tonight," Naomi continued. Nothing says love like vibrato. "We must let go! To know what's right!"

How could I have even thought about blowing these kids up?

I hung around and listened until the curtains drew to a close, signalling intermission. No one was permitted to leave, not even for a toilet break, because I couldn't risk any track team members escaping. There were buckets under the seats, in any case.

As soon as total darkness descended, I hurried across the stage to find Harley… and promptly tripped.

"Watch the parquet," Harley called from the other side, as though the floor wasn't scuffed and stamped all over with footprints already. He turned on one feeble light.

I picked myself up and glared at the spaghetti pile of wires that had gotten in my way. I shuffled them to the edge of the stage. "Harley, this needs to stop."

"Say no more," Harley said, only a willowy silhouette in the gloom. "Just tell me what you need."

"You're cooperative all of a sudden," I said. "You got so mad when I asked you to plant a bomb on the catwalk."

Harley walked towards me. I noted that his posture had grown haggard, his movements jerky. Less of that snake-like grace.

"Ah, but things have changed," he said. "In truth, Derek, this business is heartache and little else. Agnes, demanding the lion's share of the profits. Naomi, wanting to be cut loose from her exclusivity clause so she can chase bigger, shinier roles. You wouldn't believe that sweet young thing could be a prima donna, but there she is. The only tolerable one is Dustin—but I'm afraid that without a substantial talent upgrade, the boy is destined for the soaps." He gestured, defeated, and I could see he'd swapped his e-cigarette out for an e-cigar. "Rivals and saboteurs from start to finish, all waiting in the wings."

"So what are you saying? Show's over?"

"No, but our debut performance will be our last." He sighed wistfully. "The world of an artiste is far more treacherous than it once seemed."

"Now life has killed the dream you dreamed," I said, so that he'd get on with it. "Harley, we gotta go back to the original plan. Except different, because I don't think a mugging will work anymore."

"Do you still have your little explosive?"

"Nope. Never did. I couldn't figure out how to rig one up that wouldn't actually hurt anybody," I said. "What other crimes do heroes flock to?"

I have literally never seen a hero stop any crime that wasn't a mugging. Not that I usually see much crime, since most of it takes place in alleyways during the dead hours. But the one time I was out and about that late, I did witness a cape emerge from the shadows to unload a—what do you call it?—magazine of arrows into a pair of street toughs threatening a lady (probably to steal her purse).

"Superpowered crime," he suggested.

"I don't know any villains. And I don't want them to use lethal force."

Harley thought hard for a moment. He moved his e-cigar to his non-dominant hand and snapped his fingers. "I have it. You read the news last week, yes? Bank robberies bring all the Wards to the yard."

"I dunno if you noticed," I said, "but this is Winslow High School, not Brockton Bay Central Bank."

"Perhaps not," Harley said, stepping towards me.

He pressed something soft and knitted into my hands.

"But that doesn't mean there is nothing worth stealing."

**...**

There was a room by the stairwell on the second floor of the school known only as the Vault. It's been repurposed since, or maybe it had always served many purposes that I hadn't been privy to.

Back then, I knew not what treasures lay behind its nondescript grey door. Stacks of bills? Jewellery? Gold bullion? The password to Blackwell's coin account, not that it was worth much back then? Whatever it was, Harley assured me it was important—the heart of Winslow's finances.

I gave the handle a cautious jiggle, then tried to open the door. No luck.

"It's locked," I hissed.

My accomplice turned to me, his features shifting beneath the wool of his balaclava. No doubt pulling some face or other. He opened the door without the slightest resistance. "It's _push_."

"Well, we can't go in yet," I said, maybe a little sulkily. "There're bound to be other security measures."

He flipped me off and went in. "I'll deal with 'em when I get to 'em. You think this is my first heist?"

"It's not a _heist,_" I said, but he'd already slammed the door.

We only had one balaclava, or I'd have followed him. I went to check that the play was still rolling onward—since it was the distraction for the true crime—and returned after I finished my head count of the track team members. They were all still there. Alarmingly teary-eyed, too, but that was a bonus.

I flattened myself up against the door of the Vault. It must have been soundproofed with the highest quality insulation, because I couldn't hear a thing. Could the plan have gone awry? Had my accomplice been compromised? Only one thing for it. I hid my face behind my hands, only peeking through the cracks in my fingers, and entered.

When I walked into the room, the first thing I saw was Quinlan's face. The balaclava was on the floor, and he was scribbling away on a sheet of paper with a pencil.

I know this _seems_ like a bad idea, roping in Quinlan. But I didn't tell him it was a staged robbery to lure out the Ward on the track team so I could wreck him and Knott in the bet. I told him we were going to actually steal money from the School Treasury. He was very on board, given the numerous unglamorous expenses of living in an RV.

"Gladly," he said. He tried to swivel his chair around ominously, but it was a regular chair so it just kind of squeaked an inch to the right. "You won't believe how much power the Student Council Vice-Deputy Treasurer's Secretary gets over the school budget. Isabel, tell him."

I looked around. Where were the stacks of cash and gold bars? It was just an empty classroom. The only other person around was a sullen, spotty nerd in a blazer and tie, doing homework in a corner.

"None. You don't get any power," she said.

"She's the Student Council Treasurer," Quinlan went on. "Gave me my position. I told her I was great at managing money. You know I am. I woulda been a CPA if the fucking government hadn't done their fucking bullshit audit. But guess what. Gladly, guess the fuck what."

"What?"

He waved his crumpled sheet of paper, which by this point looked like a serial killer's tax return. "I... allocated… one point five grand… to... the Alcoholics Anonymous Society!"

"There's an Alcoholics Anonymous Society?" I asked, bewildered on multiple levels.

"There wasn't! I founded it so I'm the teacher-in-charge, the president, and the sole member!" Quinlan crowed. "And then I diverted all the funds from the performing arts clubs and sports teams to it!"

I was beginning to wonder if leaving my friends to their own devices wasn't the wisest decision in general, but he'd technically done what I had asked.

"Okay!" I said, at last. "Great! Well... good enough. So now for maximum realism, we need a hostage."

We turned to the Student Council Treasurer. Without looking up, she raised her hands.

We bound her wrists with her tie. Neither of us wanted to get slobber on our socks, so we decided against gagging her. She needed her mouth free anyway, to cry for help and alert any passing heroes of the ongoing robbery situation.

"Help me, an innocent hostage," she said, stationed in the corridor. "There's an ongoing robbery situation. Valuables being stolen and whatever. You know funds allocation is all done online at the start of term and vetted by the principal, right? Sometimes I don't even know why I bothered breaking the glass ceiling. Help, a robbery."

I shushed her. "Not yet. We're holding out for a hero."

And so we waited for Harley to bring the track team by to witness the crime actively taking place. We waited so long I was worried he'd forgotten or had gotten enmeshed in an encore or something. When he arrived, unaccompanied, I nearly tore into him.

"My apologies for the tardiness," Harley said, heedless of my panic. He nudged the Treasurer in through the doorway as he stepped into the room. "But something rather unexpected occurred in the denouement."

Hope sparked in my chest. "The cape. The cape came forward."

"Cape?" Quinlan asked. "Huh?"

"No, not the cape," Harley said, impatiently. "The mugging went off without a hitch, Derek. It was in the first act, for pity's sake. Weren't you paying attention when we workshopped this?"

"I thought it was the climax," I said, equally impatient. "Since that was the piece of existence_."_

"I cannot tell if you mean _raison d'être_ or _pièce de résistance, _but it was neither. The mugging itself was insignificant. What truly mattered was the aftermath, its impact on the protagonist's relationships with himself and supporting cast. The audience does not care about whether the world is saved or destroyed, whether the protagonist mugs or is mugged. It cares about whether he gets the girl in the end."

"Sounds like a load of horse-hockey," Quinlan said. "_I_ don't care if he gets the girl. Let the lady be her own person."

He nodded towards the Treasurer, who was struggling unenthusiastically to undo her bindings.

"Yeah," I said, "and I mean, I do kind of care about whether the world is destroyed or not. Mainly I wanna know if the hero dies in like a messianic blast or just a regular nuclear explosion."

Harley sniffed. "Then you are a philistine. Emotional consequences cannot be rendered in CGI."

We argued about this for another twenty minutes, and then Harley told us some loony looking for an autograph ran up onstage and got electrocuted.

"Oh, it was dreadful business. I didn't even _see_ her," he said, taking puffs on his e-cigarette. "One moment, the group is performing the closing number. The one about transcending one's social class, you may recall. The poor no longer bowing to the rich, the weak no longer fearing the strong, and so on and all that. Touching stuff. The next moment,_ she's_ there, tangled up in wires screaming blue murder. The girl was overcome with passion, bless her."

"Is she okay?" I asked.

"She is receiving medical attention, yes. Something something permanent nerve damage. Agnes is smoothing the matter over with her guardian. On a related note, she would like to see you in her office. Soonish."

* * *

I don't really remember who won the track meet bet, on account of all the concussions one apparently receives when their head is on the chopping block. You'd think your neck would bear the brunt of it, but nope. It's your noggin. Anyway I didn't win, or I wouldn't be so acutely conscious of the fact that Adams parked his car under bird-infested trees for the next five months.

And uhhh... I do remember that at the start of the last chapter I said I helped a kid become a better person. Well, Dustin's not a Nazi anymore, so that's good! He didn't make it off-Broadway, but believe me, it was no loss.


	8. Ch 6: Utilities and Mortgage

**Chapter Six: Utilities and Mortgage Are All That Will Survive**

"Even though I'm straight, I would definitely bang Bad Canary," Knott said. She rolled the dice.

Two and six. She trotted her little pewter equine over eight squares, and ended up having to fork out for luxury tax. Only about eighty percent of the bills actually stayed in the box because the banker was embezzling. I'd agreed not to blow the whistle on Quinlan as long as he let me shack up at his row of motels for free.

"I'd ask her to sing, of course," Knott continued. "Croon her filth into my ear as she rails me right into a hospital."

"I actually did attend one of her concerts," Blackwell said, smiling with just one corner of her mouth. "When I was in Minnesota for a weekend. She was… remarkable."

"Oh?" Knott turned to her. "Which tour?"

"_Nom de Plumage_, of course."

"Ooh, did you get a feather?"

"No, unfortunately." Blackwell sighed, fanning herself with a stack of bills. "It's for the best. I wouldn't want her to moult for my sake." She glanced at Adams, Quinlan and me. "You boys simply wouldn't understand. One doesn't listen to her live and not slide a notch or five down the Kinsey scale."

Quinlan shook his head. "Nah, I get it. The lass has the voice of an angel."

"_Such_ a shame about her arrest," Blackwell went on. "Aggravated assault, imagine."

"With a parahuman ability," Adams added.

Knott snorted. "She didn't know she'd left it on! For God' sake, I forget whether I've left the stove on twice a day. I have half a mind to protest the trial."

"I'm no lawyer," Quinlan said, "but I've seen how these cases go. Bet you it's just probation for six, seven months. Then she'll get drafted into the Protectorate, and we'll have another hero."

"It's unanimous, then," Blackwell said briskly. "Unless Gladly has his own graphic fantasies to share, in which case I'll need a stronger drink."

"Pass," I mumbled, staring down at my little tyrannosaurus rex parked on St. Charles Place. It was my turn next.

Adams raised his eyebrows. He'd been the one to propose her. "Come on, now. Even I can see Canary is a major smash."

"Her hair's cute, I guess." If you're into literal chicks. "But I mean… don't y'all feel like she's kind of…"

The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. I reached for the dice and rolled as gingerly as one can roll. Four and two. Community Chest. I slid a card off the pile, still face-down, and edged it over.

"Kind of what, Gladly?" Adams asked. The little shit.

"Yes, Gladly," Blackwell said, with the glint she gets when she's about to lunge for the carotid. "Do enlighten us."

"Go on, Gladly," Knott said.

_Underage,_ I wanted to say. But they'd all rip me a new one, because she's technically _not_, even though she barely looks older than some of my students. I glanced at Quinlan, hoping for some backup, but he was busy sneaking bills from the bank and into his jacket.

"Overrated?"

There was a sharp intake of breath.

I didn't make eye contact. I didn't check the card. I just picked up my token and went directly to jail.

* * *

The thing is, I have my reasons for believing Canary really isn't all that. It's not fair that I was banned from the staff lounge until I—to quote Blackwell—'rectified my wrongthink'.

"Mr. G. I'm here on behalf of my client. I have a proposition to make."

"Emma, Canary isn't your client. You're not even in this class," I said. "You can make a proposition if I decide to run this thing in your class_ next _term."

I'd elected not to include my other classes to keep things manageable.

"Madison is my client," Emma said, meaningfully.

Could lawyers have lawyers? I had no idea, but the more I contemplated it, the more sense it made. I looked over at the prosecution table, currently populated by the raincloud with the glasses, the shaggy-haired stoner kid, and Greg, and wondered why they didn't have their own.

Emma tapped on the side of the briefcase to get my attention.

"So you want to settle out of court?" I asked in a low voice.

"Settle?" She tittered. "No, no. This is a bribe."

"Emma, I am a very impartial judge," I said sternly. "I don't take bribes."

"You'll take this one."

I eyed her. I knew whose briefcase this was. I could smell it on the leather.

I took it from her and set it on my desk. I made sure to convey nothing with my expression, but triumph flashed in her eyes.

"Emma," I said. "Go back to your class."

She did.

"I know the question on everyone's minds. Does Bad Canary is gay?"

I turned around to regard the source, who was currently in front of the class.

"You're asking the wrong question, ladies and gents," Greg continued, when no one responded in any way. "The question you should be asking yourself is, does Bad Canary is_ the Simurgh?"_

He walked back to the prosecution table and grabbed a little glass test-tube looking thing from the stoner kid before he could empty the contents into what looked like a homemade hookah.

"The rumour come out." Greg raised it for the class's benefit. It contained a cloudy liquid with yellow flecks. "I have in my hand a vial that I bought online last week. Wasn't easy, but so worth it. Anyone wanna guess what's inside?"

"Superpowers?" someone joked.

"Almost!" Greg cried. "So close! But no! It's Canary's bathwater."

Murmurs of disgust. And a lust-soaked moan, from someone at the back.

"I had my crack team of forensic scientists test it for DNA, because you'd expect there to be shed skin cells and stuff in it. Guess what the results were."

"There's no viable DNA in dead skin cells," said the girl sitting in front of him.

"Ding ding ding ding! Y'all mind if I hit this?" Before anyone replied, he pounded the desk with all the strength his pea-sized fist could bring to bear. "Yeet, there was no DNA in it! No _human _DNA. And you know which other feathered lady has no recorded human DNA."

"The Simurgh is human, Greg," I said.

"Is she, though?"

"Yes."

He narrowed his eyes, looking at me with intense scrutiny. "Is shereally?"

"She's _para_human, which means she's at least half." I spoke quietly, for his ears only. "Trust me on this, no female who looks like she does is gay or extraterrestrial."

"Oh," he said, quiet himself. He brightened. "Well, I still have plenty of other evidence."

He pulled out a radio from under my desk. He must have stashed it there before class. Before I could suggest maybe _not_ turning it on, he turned it on.

Okay, look. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely a Top 40s man. I'm not about to claim real music died with the nineties, or start humming along to the most obscure OwO Godrays track (although_ Long Distance Buns_ is a toe-tapper, for a song allegedly composed of audio samples recorded inside various airport bathrooms). I welcomed the advent of Autotune, I love electro swing, and you already know hip-hop is my jam. I am the lowest common denominator. You'd think Bad Canary would be right up my alley, because her entire career is founded on churning out generic pop hit after generic pop hit. But she does this thing that sizzles my skillet like nothing else.

Vocal acrobatics.

You know what it is. You've heard the Super Bowl anthem. If you own a car radio, you've heard Bad Canary's debut album _Aviaricious._ Quick, how many syllables does 'free' have? Is your guess in the triple digits? No? Then you're way off. They should call her Big Coronary, because I would rather keel over from a heart attack than have to sit through the mind-numbing chorus of _Unbind Your Mind_ one more time. I know why the caged bird sings, and the reason is that it found the stupidly lucrative formula to being played on an infinite loop in every single goddamn mall in America.

The song came to a close, wailing its last excruciating note.

Greg beamed like he'd done us all a service. "And now," he said, quivering, one finger poised over a button. "I'm gonna play it backwards, so you can hear the subliminal messages."

Jesus Hephaestus Christ.

"Okay, no." I stood up and pulled the plug before we all drowned in melisma. "We're not doing this. Greg, detention for the rest of the week. I'm holding you in contempt of court."

"What?" he said. "Why?"

"Springing surprise evidence on Defense. Furthermore, the court has nothing but contempt for you. Go sit down." I looked at the clock. Greg had blasted through his speech so fast, there was still time left over for the prosecution. I scanned the table to find someone to replace him. "Pillsbury Dopeboy, you're up."

"Sparky," the raincloud muttered beside him. When he didn't respond, she jabbed the point of her pencil into his arm.

"Huh?" He looked down at the little dent in his skin. "Ow. Whoa, this is like, a gladiator thing? Do I have to go?"

The raincloud sighed. "Yes."

"But I dunno if it was the lady or the tiger."

"It doesn't matter. Just go."

"Uhh…" He stood up and shuffled his feet, his hands buried in the pockets of his baggy burlap jeans. "She didn't do it."

"Girl with the glasses," I said. "Maybe you should go while Sparks here refamiliarises himself with the case, and his alignment?"

"True neutral," Greg coughed into his sleeve.

The raincloud looked up at me, with an expression that suggested she'd rather be looking for an escape route. "Mr. Gladly—"

"Mr. G."

"Mr. G," she said. "I don't think Paige Mcabee should go to prison."

"Who?"

"Canary. That's her civilian name."

Huh. I hadn't expected anyone to do any serious research on the case, given the short notice, but I couldn't complain.

"It's on the news," she said. More acerbically: "My name is Taylor. And I don't think…"

She went on about her political views, and it became abundantly clear she'd been scouring news articles and feminist op-eds all weekend and probably had a file of highlighted notes.

There's a certain kind of person who is really enthusiastic about parades. They expend an enormous amount of effort and thought organising them. They rent the most expensive powered floats, decked out with a swarm of helium balloons and appropriately festive decorations. They hire a top-flight marching band, assemble a ragtag group of willing and experienced volunteers to coordinate the whole event. Then they schedule their own gorgeous, fastidiously planned celebratory procession on a day when it's absolutely_ hailing. _

Luckily, I'm always waiting around the corner, with a thumbs-up and a friendly smile. "Taylor, listen," I said, looking her right in the eye. "Sometimes you can't help the side you're on. You get dealt cards you don't want, you end up having to punish innocents and defend some awful, awful people. But see, it's not all or nothing. By participating, you actually get to dictate the terms. You have the platform to—maybe not correct an injustice, but alleviate it some."

The girl was staring into the middle distance.

"Taylor?" I prodded gently.

She didn't look at me. "Okay," she muttered.

"Attagirl. Now get up there and stand up for what someone else believes in."

She shuffled on up to the stand with her file (called it). I propped myself up on the cupboard at the back, waiting eagerly for her to drag those hand-me-down jackboots on and trample over the state.

She began. "I think—"

Someone knocked on the classroom door. She buttoned her lip.

"Sorry guys, a recess," I said, rising to the call.

Knott was waiting there when I did, her arms folded tightly over her bosom. Which I'd rate about a seven, if I'm being generous. "Gladly, what are you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing?"

"It _looks_ like you're trying to get into Blackwell's good books by staging a mock trial and rigging it so Canary gets exonerated," Knott said. "And it _looks_ like you didn't send out any permission slips, so she's going to get calls from concerned parents and become doubly irate. Then she'll take it out on the rest of us."

Normally at Winslow, we can do whatever we want without having to take any precautions or experience any negative consequences, just like in real life. But Blackwell started getting one too many complaints from parents who disagreed, and eventually she came up with this one simple trick: put exemption clauses in everything from group project instructions to Wet Floor signs so that the school can't be held liable for any mishaps, or in fact anything that transpires on school property. Even better if we can get parents to sign off on them. Opt-in forms aren't just for sex ed anymore.

I'd sort of jumped the gun. I hadn't wanted the actual Canary trial to end before I got to hold mine, in case the outcome influenced my students.

"Gee thanks, Reverse Nostradamus, for predicting things that _already happened,_" I said. "Some kid's mom whined to me last night about their little angel being exposed to politics, but I sweet-talked her into a yes. I'll handle these things when they come."

"You're going to handle the lawsuits when they come. The actual lawsuits, not this sham you've set up."

"Yep."

"Answer something for me, Gladly."

"Shoot."

"How much of this—" She gestured all-compassingly round the classroom-turned-courtroom behind me. "—is you wanting to impress Blackwell, and how much of it is your desperate need for validation from _children_? I'm guessing thirty-seventy."

"More like ten percent luck, twenty percent skill," I said crossly. I did some quick maths. "Fifteen percent concentrated power of will. Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain. And a hundred percent reason to remember the name."

Behind me, Taylor started up again, "Canary's conviction is part of a systematic attempt to disenfranchise master—"

I cut her off before she could get going. "Seriously, Taylor, this is a recess. Hang tight, burn bright."

She stopped, and I turned back to Knott.

"If anyone gets into trouble with the fuzz, it's gonna be you bunch," I said. When she looked confused, I clarified, "I just don't think it's right to be mooning over people like, half your age."

"You mean… Canary?" Knott blinked at me, mouth ajar. "How old do you think I am?"

I started to answer, but realised what she was asking and let the bait dangle where it was. "Oh no. I'm not falling for that. Stay the hell away from my car."

"What?"

"You're thinking about slashing my tires again. You're lucky I didn't report you the last time."

"Gladly, I've _never_ slashed your tires," Knott said, actually feigning concern.

"Oh yeah?" I challenged. "Then who did? Haven't corrected anyone else on their pronunciation lately."

"When did this happen?

"Last year… middle of August."

"Was it Purge Day?"

"Maybe?" I flitted through my mental calendar. "Actually yeah, the sixteenth."

"Then it was Blackwell," Knott concluded. "Didn't you see her sharpening her kukri in front of you that morning? And testing it on the slab of raw beef?"

"Oh." That did sound like something she'd do.

Knott nodded.

"I guess I was distracted by her crazy hat. The one with the feathers. Remember that hat?"

"_Yes_, and the warpaint."

"Crazy," I said.

"Where were you anyway? I didn't see you at all after the sirens went off." Under her breath, she said, "Believe me, I was looking."

I shrugged. "It's all kind of a blur."

Quinlan and I spent the whole day dressed up as inebriated zombie hillbillies. The inebriation was his idea, but I claim credit for the whole "chasing students with copies of _The Lost Cause" _thing. Man, those kids really took off!

"So we're actually cool?" I asked. "You don't hate me?"

"Hate is a strong word," Knott said. "Would I slash your tires? No. Would I siphon gas from your tank because you're a condescending ass? Now there's an interesting question."

She smiled at me, then. It didn't quite reach her orbicularis-oculi muscle—if you know what I'm saying, evopsych majors. But it showed too much teeth to be a smirk.

Then she marched off.

Even though she couldn't see, I smiled back. We were tethered now.

"Welp," I said, looking at the clock again. "Sorry, Taylor. We don't have time for you _and_ Defense."

She sat down.

"Looks like the prosecution rests," I quipped. "Who's next?

No one answered. My smile wavered a touch. That meant…

_Deep breaths, Derek_, I told myself. I walked up and planted my palms on the desk in the middle of the front row. Sometimes my speeches are going to be so good, I have to brace myself.

"Have you ever looked at someone and known straight away that they haven't self-actualised?"

I paused to let the question sink in.

"Working in a high school, I see this all the time," I said. "Kids wandering the halls, lost, faltering, uncertain in their image. Hormonal cocktails just waiting for someone else to nab them by the neck and slosh them up some semblance of self-esteem. I'm sure some of you have observed this yourselves. But it's not just the teenagers. Back when I was a college kid and went to parties of a more oestrogenical nature, I'd often pick up ladies with this one killer line: _Hey there, I can't help but notice that you have social anxiety. Can I get you a drink? _That was in fact how I scored my girlfriend.

"And similar to my girlfriend, who was having a panic attack outside the gates of the frat house of yours truly at the time, Bad Canary was on the front portico of the courthouse when I saw it." I closed my eyes, letting the news clip play out behind my lids for a moment, then opened them. I met each of my students' gazes one by one as I continued. "The lack of self-actualisation. That insecurity all over her face like wrought-iron grilles. It restrains her, muzzles her—and not in the way it should, by which I mean preventing her from riffing. Well, actually, maybe it did. But really, it's low self-esteem that holds her back."

The class stared, stunned silent by the sheer laminar force of my insight. The heat of conviction rose within me. In that moment, I was the lawyer from the movie _To Kill a Mockingbird_. I was Spartacus Finch.

I...

I told the truth.

"You see, our struggles define us as much as our successes," I said. "Maybe even more. And how can you struggle if you spend your entire life signing record deals? How can you change the world, if you can't even change your chord progression?

"It is with this in mind that I make my verdict. Guilty on a whole bunch of counts and innocent on some others, the defendant, Bad Canary, is sentenced to a lifetime in the Birdcage."

With that, I climbed onto my judge's desk and hoisted the briefcase up to chest-height. I undid the clasp, revealing the stacks of Monopoly money within. I pulled a wad out and tore off the currency band.

And I made it rain.


	9. Ch 7: Wards, What Are They Good For

**Chapter Seven: Wards, What Are They Good For (Part I)**

Principal Blackwell has extremely eclectic taste, which is to say no taste at all. Most people keep knick-knacks lying around their workplace to lend it an atmosphere of personalised whimsy. Band posters, sports memorabilia, umbilical cords in jars, that sort of thing.

Blackwell goes for a more Reich Chancellory style of interior decor.

"Gladly, are you aware of what is happening next Friday?" Blackwell asked, jerking my attention away from the mounted sculpture of former Winslow vice-principal Carolyn B. Foster's head.

At least I hope that's a sculpture. If it isn't, I hope the missing hair is from all the lung cancer treatment she got in her twilight years.

Although I don't think chemo makes the scalp fall off too.

"Well," I said, "I was gonna visit my mom, but then she'll start asking about the job hunt and I'd have to lie to her about being a teacher again because I don't want her to stop sending money. And if we go to a restaurant, I'll have to push my dad's wheelchair around. Do you know how many food places in Brockton Bay have ramps? The same as the number of schools in Brockton Bay that have ramps. Zero."

"If I cared to hear about the myriad of ways parents have singularly failed in rearing their spawn, I would schedule a PTA," Blackwell said. "In a way, I did. Next Friday is the annual Wards visit."

"That was going to be my second guess."

Blackwell took a puff from the cigarette propped up against her ashtray. "Surely you've noticed _some_ of the ongoing preparations. Such as the absence of graffiti."

"That's too bad," I said. "I kind of liked some of those ABB murals. Whoever did them has a real talent for calligraphy."

"And I suppose you would advise whoever spray-painted the circumcised penis on my office window to look into illustrating Japanese erotic comics."

I shook my head. "The glans was way out of proportion. And I would never tell anyone they had a future in hentai."

"Let me apprise you of what will happen on Friday afternoon," Blackwell said, choosing to press on. "You will emcee the assembly, which is to say you will commit to memory a prepared script and deliver it with all your usual nauseating bubblegum fervour. You will not deviate from your lines, and you will exit stage right as soon as you are finished. You will keep your dysfunction _down_ in the presence of the attending heroes. You will ensure that your fellow faculty members and students do the same."

"That sounds like work," I said. "I mean the memorising thing. Can't I have a teleprompter or something?"

She let out a harsh sigh that evolved into a cough, likely the result of all that smoking. "In the interest of you not feeling compelled to improvise or, heaven forfend, _beatbox—"_

"They loved me out there."

"I will allow you notecards. Don't abuse them. Don't_ drop_ them, unless it's edgewise down your own wrists in a vertical motion, repeatedly and with considerable force. And for God's sake, email me beforehand so I can find a replacement in time." She withdrew a thin binder from under her desk and slid it over to me. "Your script."

Sensing our business was done, I started to leave.

"Gladly," Blackwell said.

I stopped at the door, turning around.

"If you screw this up, there will be consequences."

"What're you gonna do, fire me?" I joked.

"I could," she said, unsmiling, "but I don't think the threat carries sufficient gravity. You're simply too dense to comprehend the implications of unemployment in this climate. If I were to fire you, I'd fully expect to find you living in a urine-soaked cardboard box not two weeks later, wondering why your new landlord only accepts rent in the form of soup cracker crumbs—all the while remaining terminally, blissfully, unrepentantly ignorant of exactly what it was you did to get there_._"

"So… you're_ not_ going to fire me?"

"I won't rule out that possibility. But you need to understand, getting rid of you is not what I want."

"I don't, uh... I don't get it."

She leaned forward intently. "Ask me what I want."

"What do you want?" I asked, growing a touch clammy in the palm region.

"I want to fix you."

A touch clammy became rather a lot clammy. "Oh. Uh… thanks? But I—"

"_Sh-sh-shh." _Blackwell pressed a finger against her lips. "Let me finish."

I shut my trap.

She lowered the finger to the half-full crystal decanter beside her monitor and began to trace the designs. In a tender, almost maternal tone, she said, "I want to fix you. I want to seize whatever kaleidoscopic clown's lens you view the world through, dash it against the walls of reality, and puncture your eyeballs with the splinters so that you can see the way everyone else does."

"I'm—"

"I want to fix you." She grasped the decanter by the neck and lifted it to the light, idly swirling the amber liquid inside. "I want to reach into your head and personally rearrange whatever flotsam drifts within until you feel the ramifications of the damage you have singlehandedly wreaked upon the reputation of this school since the accursed day you arrived. I want you to experience, viscerally, a _fraction _of the shame and regret you deserve just for being you. In short, Derek Gladly, I want you to suffer."

She looked at me, then, her face ossifying in an instant. She set the decanter back down with a _thump_. I flinched.

"Unfortunately, I don't have the power to do that," she said. "So I will settle for this: if you fail, Mr. Derek Gladly, if you take one step out of line, I'm going to call another assembly, and I will pull the trigger on a video of yours that you do not want made public."

"Listen," I said, "I don't know how you got that footage, but it would be_ really _inappropriate to share with kids. Like, illegally inappropriate. We'd both get put on the registry."

"I'm not referring to your debauched webcam tomfoolery," she said.

If not that, then what—

Oh.

_Oh._

"I'll be good," I said quickly.

"I'm glad we came to an understanding." Blackwell's face softened to an expression that could pass for warm, but only if you had been raised by wolves in the Arctic tundra. "Now remove yourself from my office. Some of us have jobs to get back to."

As I hurried out the door, I caught a glimpse of her stubbing out her cigarette on the ex-vice principal's tongue.

* * *

That Agnes Blackwell. Such a card.

Speaking of cards, I had a whole stack of them. I hung around outside the gym nervously rearranging them. I was on my best behaviour, which meant no interaction with the kid superheroes until after my speech, but I couldn't help sneaking glances.

The Wards and two Protectorate chaperones were waiting to enter the gym, all suited up in their nifty costumes. They stood in single file with their backs to the wall, and they looked extraordinarily uncomfortable, like they were afraid teenagers were going to spring from the lockers in a coordinated assault even though the student body was already packed inside the gym.

I didn't blame them. An empty Winslow hallway is what the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone sees when it remembers its childhood. Every employee from the janitorial staff to the vice-principal demands hazard pay at some point. Do they get it? Just ask Carolyn B. Foster.

_Fuck it, mask off_, I thought. I'd go ahead and talk to the kid with the clocks all over him. He looked fun.

Just as I approached, the sensation of _wind _blew past. I turned to see what had happened, as did everybody else. There was a collective scandalised gasp.

It was Quinlan. He was sprinting down the hallway.

He also wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing.

Why? Why now? My speech and the Wards' subsequent dynamic entry were due in T-minus ten. I decided that the sensible thing to do was pretend I hadn't noticed the naked man in the room, but Blackwell was standing next to me and wouldn't allow that. She gave me a rather forceful nudge and breathed a few strong encouragements in my ear. I had to sort this out, or else.

Eventually, I tracked him down to the sound room. I don't know the name for it. It's just a room with all the audio equipment the AV Club stores for pep rallies and Wards Day assemblies. Of which there was one happening in an increasingly short amount of time.

Upon entering, I switched on a light—not all of them, I didn't want to be greeted by a particular sight fully illuminated. But he'd already found a hiding spot, it seemed. I navigated the clutter, kicking my way to the centre of the room.

"Quinlan! You in here?"

His voice came from under a desk in the corner. Tentative. "Gladly?"

"Quinlan." I hoped he could hear me shaking my head; I wasn't about to get any closer. "On Wards Day, we have one job. Well, _I_ have two jobs. You have one. That one job is to stay fully clothed in front of the Wards at all times. The Protectorate is one thing, but these are _minors._"

"I didn't_ know_ it was Wards Day." He sounded irritated.

"How could you not know—" I thought about it. "Yeah, okay, fair. I didn't know until a week ago either. Apparently there were announcements? But the PA system is like, ridiculously loud half the time and totally inaudible the other half."

"Right?" he said. "Why did bullying get a whole fuckin' campaign but not Wards Day?"

"I think, on the whole, the media places too much emphasis on loser underdogs instead of celebrating the real heroes of the world: people who can tank bullets and shoot lasers from their eyes."

"Uh, so, that's kinda related to something I wanted to talk to you about. Anyone else with you?"

I double-checked. "Nope, just me."

"I'm a cape," Quinlan said.

"Oh." I was surprised, but not shocked. Truth be told, I'd suspected a couple of times, solely based on just how much punishment his liver managed to survive on a minutely basis. "That's cool. So, you like, fight crime?"

"Yeah… so." A moment of hesitation. "I'm not exactly… a hero."

I was suddenly and profoundly conscious of the literal team of superpowered superheroes sworn to uphold the law, elsewhere in the building.

"Please tell me you're a rogue," I said urgently. "Quinlan. You're a rogue, right?"

Quinlan was speechless for a while. Then he punched the underside of the desk so hard, one of the speakers on it toppled.

I stared at it. "I don't know what that means."

"It means shut the fuck up, Gladly!" he exploded. "Jesus fuck, of course I'm not a fucking waste-of-space pussy rogue. What, you think I'm fucking around in my little corner boutique, mass-producing frilly little cotillion dresses with little—" Here, his hands rose from behind the desk and started pinching at the air like a seamstress lobster. _"—telekinetic needles?"_

"No, I—"

"You think I'm tossing crates into trucks in a fucking warehouse with my God-given superstrength? You think I'm fucking zipping from continent to continent through international airspace delivering people's fucking postcards? You think I'm shrinking landfills with a handheld matter disintegration ray capable of distinguishing between recyclables and non-recyclables so I can sell the glass bottles to the municipal recycling plant at a profit? You really think I'm messing with small potatoes like that, Gladly? You think I'm fucking flash-frying those small potatoes into small hashbrowns at the local family diner with the fucking animatronics that I gotta maintain myself using a convenient secondary electrokinetic ability because dual hatting helps the owner cut costs? You think I'm fucking the owner's wife in zero-G because he wouldn't give me Friday off? You think I'm resurrecting the fish I accidentally brained with a rock when I fell into a pond trying to escape his shotgun? You think I was inspired by the zombie koi and am using holographic projection to film a shitty low-budget _Jaws_ ripoff where all the sharks have cranial swelling and regenerative biosynthesis? You think I'm getting arrested for using precoggery to manipulate the stock market in the hopes of getting out of the red after the film is a total and unequivocal fucking flop? You think I'm activating a calmness field over the exercise yard to contain a prison riot at the behest of the fucking warden so she'll put in a good word for me at my parole hearing? Well, I don't do that shit, Gladly! Because I have standards!"

"Quinlan, what you have is way too much pent-up rage towards rogues," I said. "Stop taking it out on me and just tell me what you _are_ doing for a living."

The sound of his teeth grinding was amplified by a nearby mic.

"Holding up gas stations," he said, finally.

I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Followed by ten or twenty shallow breaths.

You know that feeling when your boss threatens to release extremely compromising material starring you and a turkey baster and a whole lot of unauthorised textbook sales if you screw up, so you try really hard not to and almost succeed, but then your friend ruins everything at the last minute by being a notorious supervillain? That was how I felt.

"Okay. Okay. It's okay." I started pacing a little. "It'll be fine. It's fine. They can't do anything while you're in civilian guise. I read it on PHO."

"About that," Quinlan said.

"Quinlan," I said, dragging my fingers down my cheeks. "Please don't tell me you are wearing your costume right now."

There was a long pause.

Slowly, he rose from behind the desk, and I'll never forget the way the rounded contours of his chest and beer gut shimmered in the dust-spangled light. He wasn't really in the buff, merely wearing a skintight leotard that was the exact same dusky olive as the rest of him and had tiny star-shaped holes where the nipples were.

The sight made me re-evaluate all the other times I'd thought I'd seen him nude. Man, I used to think he had star-shaped nipples. Bubble popped.

"I never know what to tell you," he complained, approaching. He lowered his sunglasses to leer at me over the lenses, and dropped his voice to a growl. "I can never satisfy you."

Seduction doesn't work on me when I'm on Adderall, which is why I normally don't take it. But I'd taken it for the event so I could focus instead of spiralling. I folded my arms, implacably flaccid. "You could start by explaining why your costume consists of a flesh-tone leotard and a pair of sunglasses. Real creative."

"Hellhound only wears a mask," he said defensively.

"Sunglasses," I said, "are not a mask."

"They're better than a mask when you think about it," he grumbled. "Domino masks don't even cover the eyes."

"Domino masks don't fall off when you do flips."

"Why would I do flips?"

"I don't know, I don't know what your power is!"

"Keep your voice down!" he yelled. "My power has nothing to do with doing flips!"

"Why did you out yourself to your class?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"The IV. You were wearing your costume in front of your class."

"Oh. No, that time I was actually naked."

"Okay." I puzzled the situation out in my head. "Right, so all I need to do is get you some clothes and you're officially a civilian."

"I was on my way to get them," he said. "I keep a set stashed somewhere in the school at all times."

"Where is it?"

"There's a bag in a hidden crawlspace right next to the back door of the gym. Where the defective dodgeballs are." He groaned. "I can't get to it like this."

"_I'll_ get it," I said. "But you can't stay here. The AV Club is coming in five minutes."

"You could give me _your _clothes."

"Buddy," I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. I looked him in the eye. "Old pal. There's a lot of things I'd do for you, but this ain't one of them."

"Come on," he wheedled. "Just the boxers?"

"I wear briefs."

He recoiled. "Jesus. _Never mind."_

That was a lie. I don't wear either. I'd like to have kids of my own someday, after all.

I headed for the front entrance of the gym. Technically it's to the south if you use a compass (and I have), but it's easier to get to than the northern door. You ever notice that everything that's more convenient is automatically labelled 'front' and everything else is 'back' or 'side' regardless of geographical truth? Anyway, I'd enter through the front door, cross the gym and get to the back door dodgeball crawlspace that way. I'd have to walk in front of or even through about a thousand kids, but I could probably distract them with a nice beatbox—

No dice. Standing guard outside the front entrance was Blackwell, and she looked _pissed. _Worst of all, that pissiness looked very much directed at me. I checked my watch. Right. Speech in three minutes.

Okay. Okay. Deliver the clothes to Quinlan, then rush back to give the speech? Or give the speech now and leave Quinlan hanging?

I looked at Blackwell, observed the threat in her eyes, involuntarily clenched every orifice, and reached for the stack of cards in my pocket. Speech first, then.

"—sighted at Winslow. Lucky Streak."

My ears pricked at the low voice. I evaded Blackwell's line of sight—no easy feat—and carefully slipped around the corner from whence it came.

It was the Protectorate chaperones, skulking around the watercooler. Armsmaster and the one in red, white and blue camo with all the glowing guns she always shows off on TV. Miss America? No, Miss Militia.

Armsmaster had gone silent, probably listening to the robot living in his helmet. Then he turned to Miss Militia and exchanged a few words with her.

I couldn't hear what they were saying. But I read his lips loud and clear.

"_Master/Stranger protocols are in effect."_


End file.
